Contract Of USC Law School Dean Won’t Be Renewed

By FITSNews || Fresh on the heels of another disappointing performance in the annual U.S. News & World Report rankings, USC’s School of Law now finds itself looking for a new leader.

Dean Walter F. “Jack” Pratt, Jr. will not seek reappointment to the post he has held since 2006, the school announced on Tuesday.

Of course before he goes, Pratt will lead a “blue ribbon panel” that will seek “external advice to identify key areas of research consistent with the overarching themes of the university to be oriented globally just as strongly as it is on the needs of the state of South Carolina.”

Sheesh …

Another casualty of the University’s obsessive focus on speculative “economic development” deals, USC’s law school has been dropping like a rock in the national rankings. As recently as the early 2000s, USC’s law school was ranked in the high 70s or low 80s according to U.S. News and World Report, but it has now dropped out of the Top 100 altogether and into dreaded “Tier 3? status.